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Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Some videos and preliminary notes on playing the langspil

D R A F T

Icelandic langspil.
﻿A quick introduction by Chris Foster. He and his partner Bára Grímsdóttir perform as the duo FUNI, have a website at http://www.funi-iceland.com/. They were at Common Ground on the Hill the last time I was there, in 2013.

Michael J. King, luthier of the UK, demonstrates one of his langspils. "This is a little clip of a newer version of the Icelandic Langspil model I make. The melody is tuned to a, the middle drone to f# and the bass to B."

FUNI (Bára Grímsdóttir & Chris Foster) perform an Icelandic love song at the Mystic Sea Music Festival 2012. This song is called Man eg þig mey text by Jónas Hallgrímsson, The tune is a traditional tvísöng melody that would normally be sung by two people singing in parallel fifths. The langspil plays the second voice here.

xxx

Ryan Koons performs the song "Stóðum tvö í túni" on the langspil, a type of zither from Iceland. Langspil built by Ken Koons.

Being a string player myself, I thought langspil might be similar to the
cello, my main instrument. I found soon out that there are indeed some things in common but
other things are very unlike. The hand position was the first thing I struggled with. Cello
players use all five fingers on the left hand to press down the strings, and there are no frets to
show the player where the note is. On langspil, the player only uses the left thumb to press
down and the rest of the left fingers support the instrument so it does not move while playing.
The first thing I had to do was to train my left hand and get used to the new position of it.

* * *

After using the chop sticks for a while in my playing, I tried to use my spare cello bow
to play the instrument. That bow is unusually light and has little amount of horse hair, and is
therefore not so good for cello playing but more convenient for the langspil. It was however
difficult to control it, since it is longer than original langspil bows. I personally think the
sound from the pin is more pleasant but I want to be able to play with more variety so I will
focus on getting the right bow technique the next days. The bow grip is different from what a
cellist is used to, since the direction to stroke in is not the same. A cellist strokes the bow to
the left and the right but while playing langspil, one has to stroke forward and back.
Therefore, the langspil player has to hold the bow in a hand position that reminds of how
people hold pencils.

Hildur Heimisdóttir and Júlía Traustadóttir in 2013 put up a Facebook event page promoting a concert in Reykjavik: "Júlía (voice) and Hildur (langspil) will perform their own arrangements of Icelandic folk songs, selected so that the delicate and rare sound of this special instrument can be enjoyed." https://www.facebook.com/events/145257275683034/. Wilfried Ulrich commented, w/ pix of a bowed hummel.

Icelandic-language blurb on the langspil on the website for Iceland's national museum looks like it might have some interesting background on hymns, etc.:

Lang card (A-14545) from pine wood and two on top of each other and the strong and a bottom chord. It is often referred to string instruments is best to have the tape, but may not have been such for all households in the golden age long game (from about the middle of the 18th to the mid-19th century). This string instruments on the other hand no table. Two strings are the frets and frets have a router that is mounted on top of the tree. One "drones" or organ tone string is above the one ómstrengur (resónans or string) as the Hardanger fiddle, Indian sitar or the Norwegian instrument lange game often ribbon with string instruments. It would be possible to play two notes against the note bass, not only as the most long games. Moreover, movable frets that must be considered unique among the instruments that have been preserved. Curved with horse hair and the bow compartment of the instrument. The instrument was struck string as received by the string instruments are said to have either had the horsehair strings, messínstrengi or brass strings.

By the mid-19th century was to string instruments throughout the country, many of them home-and of different types, but in the second half of the century seems Gaming decreased. In the early 20th century was hardly the person who knew how to play string instruments. Play music technology and tradition has not survived and it is impossible to say how the music played on string instruments have sound. Find the Election Ere described this however: "And I have seen such unique people in youth my is played so the string instruments, they were finger play a little back and forth on each note, they supported on, and they called it the" let sound wag ". This meant that the singing of these men became little more than a sincere little rings and small boats. "Perhaps this could be related raddtækni employed in poetry law, but there was talk of style the like jerk, jolt or wiggling which was an important part of the style the that was common in at least introduce the rímur Breiðafjörður early 20.öld.

Maybe people have not even long card fine when new music was emerging. In itself the golden age long game in the middle of the 19th century was the clergy at Thorsnes Thing singing in churches to be lacking and would rather send someone teenage abroad to study, to learn singing and preferably also a musical instrument, "if only string instruments." But nowhere would probably be a better place at the time to study string instruments than here.

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About Me

I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.